Cory Lopez, door of the safe, Mainland Mexico

And, so it happens, that Mr Cory Lopez, 35, from Daytona Beach, Florida, and a one-time contender for the world title (2001, came third), was skidding around home in the middle of summer, ain’t a wave for miles or days, and figures, this ain’t living, called a surf mag and asked if they’d send a photographer on a trip to Mex with he and Oliver Kurtz (Bruce Irons would arrive four days later), even though there wasn’t a ripple on the charts, and then, with tickets already booked, up pops a hurricane. “They were calling for no swell for a week,” says Cory. “Then that hurricane arrived and gave us insane swell. We shot for seven days straight. Every day was perfect.” Cory surfed from six-thirts straight through to when the wind came up every day. “Oh god, we were going mad,’ says Cory, who surfed in O’Neill lycra shorts to stymie rash. “Mex likes to blow out about noon and we’d be in the water at 6:30 , but there were a couple of days that didn’t blow out until two. That’s a seven-hour session right there.” Says the photographer, Corey Wilson: “Some of these waves were throwing so wide you could fit a small vehicle inside the barrel. It was pretty inspiring watching Cory surf out there with such comfort. All trip he was sitting extremely deep on these peaks and managed to make it out of most of them with ease.” How big might these waves be? “The big days, there were borderline 10-footers,” says Cory. “Everyone’s 10 foot is different. Mine’s pretty solid.”